Unravelling the edge of me
By Cynthia Kinnunen
Unpsychology Magazine’s 10th anniversary issue is on the theme of EDGES. The magazine is published in digital and print formats, with some of the multimedia pieces and collaborations appearing here, on the Unpsychology Substack. You can download a FREE copy of EDGES from HERE, or order a print copy from HERE.
Unravelling the edge of me: words, sound and image
By Cynthia Kinnunen
SOUND
Stitch
slow arpeggiated stitch beat
Weight/grounding
synth bass
Connect/disconnect/reaching
glitch vocals
Identity/wayfinding
ukulele play and weave
Listen to Cynthia’s music piece - Unravelling weave and disconnect above at: https://audiomack.com/unpsychology/song/cynthia-kinnunen
WORDS
A blanketful of edges: midlife
Who can we be? Who are we when we transition across the liminal spaces of the various contexts in our lives? Who are we allowed to be? Or allow ourselves to be? These are questions I have found myself grappling with in my early-stage research work in a later-life doctoral program. I am a music educator and community musician, a student, a mother, a daughter, a partner, a woman in the midst of the menopausal transition, a creative, a bibliophile, a wishful gardener, a lover… I am so many things but this is always changing, just as we all are many things and these things ebb and flow as we go about our days, our lives. Some of these labels sit morecomfortably at times than others.
In reaching this stage of life, however, this midlife moment, I have fallen into an exploration of this existence through the use of creative activities. Let me step back a moment to contextualize. I was fascinated by the challenges, emergences, questions, vulnerabilities that I felt in myself and saw in others as we moved through this middle period of life. My children were getting older, I had moved back into a career with music later in life, I went back to graduate school and discovered how much I found the intersection and interrelationship between research and practice to be valuable and immensely rewarding. I chose to pursue doctoral studies as a next step. This felt different. I was approaching fifty. I was committing to something that would mean some adjustments in the family's life. I would need to balance the juggle of full-time studies with work and family. As I found myself moving between the many roles I was now playing, alongside the transitions and life events transpiring,
I was drawn to document and reflect on this experience. Something drew me towards deeper investigation and I aimed to use modes of creative expression to make this happen. I find I can often get to new ways of thinking through multiple modes of making, of creating, of exploring. This would become part of my doctoral research as reflexive practice.
In working through this process, I realized how much I could explore, how many sides of my experience there were, how many edges existed in what I was navigating. As a starting point, I was inspired by Nora Bateson's provocations in thinking systemically, relationally: Who can I be when I'm with you and who can you be when you're with me? Who was I as I moved about my various roles, across edges of these different contexts? I found myself balancing sometimes precariously on the edges of identity: who am I now? Where do I fit? Do I need to fit?
As a woman in this stage of life, I had a very noticeable move into a period of invisibility. I hadn't realized how obvious it would actually be but there it was. I was now old. Or at least older. I'd clearly moved out of a life's chapter and into another. But I was now also a learner in a space that I was figuring out how to operate in and learn the rules of, and it had some clear framework and language and hierarchy. I was a teacher in another where I was the guide to others, encouraging, challenging. I was mothering and tending, preparing food and holding space for those in my closest care. I was trying to establish which way I should be turning my crooked tree self to find the light and feel more deeply where my roots could take hold. These edges of identity, of time, of contexts, they were sometimes soft and permeable, sometimes rigid and mysterious, sometimes they were hurtful. But the movement between and into and around still took place with regularity in each day, each month, each year.
And so I decided to document the beginning of one of these big transitions: the move into pursuing doctoral studies. Research that would be very personal, very interactive and iterative alongside my teaching practice, and deeply touching my human existence. I have been making use of multiple modalities of creative expression or craft to chronicle this process. Daily journaling linked to an emotional temperature blanket crocheted with regularity and interrogated. Poetry composed to express the more metaphorical discoverings. Soundscapes generated to make sense of the more visceral and audible feelings I was having. All of these outputs emerging iteratively, looping if you will, assisting in a process of investigation and figuring. All of the expressions brought forth feelings of vulnerability and courage, of disconnection and reconnection, of control and loss, of mapping an almost unknown territory but knowing out there lies what is needed and that along the journey will be opportunities for sustainable growth and compassion. We can move about this space and these contexts, this journey of aging and transitions, by opening ourselves up to creativity in its many forms as a way in or across, or to soften those unpredictable yet permeable edges, and be confident in our always-emerging self, ready for real human connection. I recognize I may never fully know where the edge of me lies, in time or space or in relation. But weaving together these distinct experiential, temporal, and emotional edges allows my heart and mind the potential to cross them with more empathy for others, more compassion for myself. I am grateful for my crooked tree self that is still and always learning to be.
Poem: unravelling the edge of me
vibration, fibre, colour, marrow ... where do they intersect in a temporal space that becomes an amalgam of a year an aging and an emerging a liminal calendar across planes seen, felt, contemplated but still changing even after, always where does this time fall out where do I end between the struggle to weave together impossible emotions to accept a reality of what was and its presence in what still is distant insecurities invoke shade and shadow hooked and pulled forth across time and essence bold tones, chosen with optimism indicators of hope in uncomfortable spaces and blue melancholy over distances of geography of day of thought of urges to connect and be seen they sit exposed displaying their frustrating splay, damn them denying, defying, not willing to be told they hold each other but can't fully commit their kinship perceived either fraying or clinging active impatient every line, every hue an edge simultaneously gripping and letting go curling and singing, with the openness of an octave or two can harmony be here can it cooperate might the timbre of aging sound and body be present and hold it all can a warmth, a fire glow even weave itself in and find residence resonance midlife makes moves we could never expect and so we still hold tight to threads and tones and tendrils the possibility of one moment and all moments in us and wherever we may end
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Cynthia, thanks for this. I particularly enjoyed your music. Keep up the great work.